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Riddles

The young lady at the Safeways checkout looks across my groceries and says, “So, you gotta riddle for me today?”

I like it when this happens. Someone I’ve done riddles with before remembers me, and wants another one. So I’m standing there with the shopping wagon, my 4 year-old granddaughter Jayla inside, and I say:

Why walk or run when you can hop it/I keep the future in my pocket. What am I? ”

She prices my cheddar cheese and green beans and slides them along.

“Huh!” she says thoughtfully.

Suddenly, Jayla’s voice comes from the shopping cart.

“Kangaroo!”

We’re all laughing and I reach through to pat her on the back. On the way home I discover that she knows the answers to 11 of them. It blows me away.

 

I tell riddles every day. I love it. There’s laughter. There’s teasing. Clues. Wild guesses… There’s the joy of finding the solution. I know of no other language form with such breadth of appeal. Children like them, and teenagers. Adults. The 90 year-old lady at the Food Bank learns my riddles by heart. She says they’re good for her brain.

 

Pomegranate Publications publishes 2 packs of my riddles.  To my pleased surprise they’ve sold over 30,000. I am, I think I can say, one of the world’s most successful riddlers. How about that for a niche?

 

CLICK HERE TO GET RIDDLES

 

Sample riddles

 

 

Strange it is

that I have no tail or head

Strange it is

that I have no legs

that I pull on my hot yellow robe

dive between two soft pillows

and disappear into the dark red cave.

 

Hot dog

 

I am where loud beasts rest a while

ticking to themselves

as though  remembering their journeys

 

Some beasts tag their spot

with warm fluids

Dominant beasts mark their territories

 

Dead beasts are dragged away

by big beasts.

 

I don’t know where they go

But some of them come back to life.

 

Car park/parking lot

 

 

Sometimes we are together

in a close embrace

Sometimes we are parted

and thrust into dark caves

 

Sometimes we dance

with the members of other tribes

the hot wet dance

the hot dry dance

 

Socks

 

 

One in me

Two in you

One in him

One missing

 

– Vowels

 

Fine it is to feel

when a current of water

flows around me

and I vibrate

 

Fine it is to feel

when a current of air

flows around me

and I vibrate

 

The first is quiet

The second sings.

 

-Reed

 

Four long ground-standers

Four short down-hangers

Two crookers

Two lookabouts

One whiskabout

and a bellow-box

 

-Cow

 

We tell the world

That you were here

Sometimes we’re hard to see

Sometimes we’re clear

We show your touch

Both weak and strong

And you may curse these lines

If you did wrong

 

-fingerprints

 

 

 

I bring you music

I cover cold creatures

To read me you must step on me

 

-Scales

We glow in your room.

We grow in your garden

Only the name

Is the same.

-Bulb

 

My round mouth

will never talk.

Where I vomit

there you walk.

 

-Concrete mixer